Can Economies Develop Without Warming the Globe?

Below:

Next story in Science

Can the world promote economic development while still halting
climate change?

It's a complicated question, but a new study suggests that so
far, humanity isn't doing so well at meeting both goals at the
same time. A regional analysis of 106 countries around the world
finds that, with the partial exception of Africa, most areas emit
more and more carbon to improve their citizens' well-being as
those nations become more developed.

The findings are the latest volley in a debate going back at
least to the 1970s over whether development and fossil fuel
consumption have to go hand-in-hand. One idea holds that as
nations become more developed, they can improve their citizens'
well-being more efficiently, without adding to their rates of
carbon emissions, which contribute to global
warming. The new study suggests that this optimistic
viewpoint isn't playing out.

Jorgenson's research focuses on the question of whether economic
development must conflict with the environment, or whether
development can instead protect the environment. The scientist
analyzed data from between 1970 and 2009. First, he measured the
carbon intensity of well-being
for each country — basically, a ratio of how much carbon a nation
has to emit to improve its people's lot in life. In this case,
Jorgenson used life expectancy at birth as a way to estimate
well-being. Populations with longer life expectancies generally
have a better standard of living.

Next, Jorgenson tracked the ratio over time, comparing it to each
country's gross domestic product, a measure of economic
development. He wanted to know if countries would become more or
less efficient at improving well-being as they developed. He also
split the countries into continental regions to better understand
the trends at a local level.

"What is going on, on the ground in different parts of the world,
is unique to those places," Jorgenson told Live Science.

The results showed different patterns in different regions. In
Asia and South and Central America, development led to an
increase in the carbon expended to boost well-being, Jorgenson
found. What's more, the carbon curve is getting steeper over
time. The more developed these nations become, the more carbon
they emit for each incremental improvement in their people's
well-being.

"These are nations that are experiencing incredible economic
development, and they are experiencing, increasingly so,
carbon-intensive economic development," Jorgenson said.
Carbon-intensive development would involve manufacturing jobs
over, say, an expansion of the service industry.

In North America, Europe and the Oceania (Australia, New Zealand
and the Pacific islands) region, development is also linked to
higher carbon
emissions per unit of well-being, though this relationship is
steady compared to Asia, and Central and South America.

The Africa exception

The only place where development doesn't increase the carbon
emitted to improve human lifespans is Africa — so far, at least.
Beginning in the 1970s, development in Africa was first linked to
a drop in the carbon intensity of well-being. Most likely, the
first burst of development in these countries was not in
carbon-intensive industry, Jorgenson said.

But around 1995, the story changed. As these nations continued
developing, they began to emit more and more carbon for every
extra year their populations could expect to live. The trend
suggests that in the near future, Africa will look more like the
rest of the world, and will have to trade environmental
sustainability for economic development.

"Ideally, we want enhanced human well-being, we want reduced
environmental impacts, and we want human development to continue.
But this shows that pretty much across all these macro regions,
the trade-off challenge is getting harder," Jorgenson said. He
published the findings today (Feb. 23) in the journal Nature
Climate Change. [ What
11 Billion People Mean for the Planet ]

Sustainability solutions

The research is a sophisticated analysis, said Tom Dietz, a
sociologist and environmental scientist at Michigan State
University who has collaborated with Jorgenson in the past but
did not work with him on the current research. The findings mesh
with previous work by Dietz and others, Dietz told Live Science.

"Increasing economic growth does not reduce the [carbon]
intensity of well-being," Dietz said. "In fact, the general
tendency is for economic growth to increase intensity and move us
away from sustainability."

The hope that increased development could lead to decreasing
emissions was, perhaps, always slim. Conservationists talk about
"rebound effects," which tend to offset the benefits of new
technology. For example, Jorgenson said, at the time of the
Industrial Revolution, technological advances increased the
efficiency of
burning coal. But instead of consuming less coal, or even the
same amount of coal, at these new levels of efficiency, humanity
started burning more and more of the resource.

In modern times, both the United States and China have become
more carbon efficient, meaning that the ratio of emissions per
unit of GDP has dropped, but this alone has not slowed carbon
emissions, Jorgenson said. (Yearly
fluctuations in the economy and in energy needs do drive
short-term emissions trends.)

"We need to start seriously thinking differently about solutions
to these sustainability challenges and recognizing that hoping
for technology and engineering solutions … is probably not the
way to go," Jorgenson said. "The reality is, we just need to
reduce carbon emissions."